


Things You Don't Confess

by Impatiens_capensis



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: ATEM IS ALIVE, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Nightmares, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Yami Yuugi | Atem has his own body, awkward Atem, background Yuugi/Atem, brief reference to unwanted sexual arousal, i can't get the 'Atem is alive' tag to stop being in all caps but that's not how i typed it, it is left ambiguous whether the same holds true for Bakhura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 00:36:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15852657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impatiens_capensis/pseuds/Impatiens_capensis
Summary: Ryou has a nightmare. He goes to work and lives his life as usual, but is shaken up. He decides to visit Atem, just so that he won't be alone.Edit 11/11/2018: fixed something I was confused about regarding canon





	Things You Don't Confess

A warm hand held Ryou’s hand. A warm shoulder leaned into Ryou’s shoulder. The two of them were on Ryou’s couch, watching a movie. Ryou knew in his head that the movie was supposed to be _28 Days Later_ , but for some reason, the zombies were ballroom dancing. Well, weren't there outfits like this in the part with the rapist soldiers? It was probably around that part of the movie. Ryou’s companion leaned their head into his shoulder. There was security like this, watching a familiar movie with someone he loved. His companion kissed him softly on the neck, sloppily leaving a cool, wet spot behind. But Ryou wasn't dating anyone, right? He hadn’t ever. His chest tightened, his neck felt weighed down by the kiss. He held his companion’s hand tighter. Breathe in... breathe out. He looked over his shoulder at Bakhura, who he was cuddling with. He couldn’t pull away fast enough.

“Where are you going, landlord? The movie isn't over yet.”

—

Ryou kept his eyes closed after startling himself awake. That wasn’t real. Bakhura had been gone for a long time and _28 Days Later_ didn't have a scene like that. He focused on taking long, slow breaths, pulling as much air into his lungs as humanly possible and letting it go. Hell, he’d never lived in a place with living room that looked like the living room in the dream. Really, he should’ve known better. He opened his eyes slowly and saw he was in the apartment he’d gotten since graduating high school. He wasn't in high school anymore. Right. This place was his own. This was a place Bakhura had never been.

His body, his mind started coming back to him. He needed to get up and pee. And shower. And get dressed and brush his teeth and hair and take the subway to get to his convenience store job. He tried not to think about his erection and how even though it was completely normal to wake up like that, he had been dreaming about physical intimacy with someone, someone who had stabbed him and given him multiple lasting scars. He’d take a shower and his erection would go away and he’d continue living his boring life as a single gay man with a boring part-time job whose correspondence with the dead was all one-sided these days. Everything was as it should be, he supposed.

—

The sun wasn’t up yet when Ryou reached his work. He turned on the radio and started off switching out some food that passed its sell-by date today. His coworker, a woman a few years older than him whose family name was Ogata, came in shortly after. They finished preparing and opened the store to early morning commuters picking up food. There was a heavy tightness that sat in his chest while he worked the register, but he knew there was nothing to fear and said his lines like normal. “Would you like that heated up?” “Here’s your change.” “Thank you very much.” It was easier not to think when he was busy. When they ran out of things to do, he made small talk with Ogata about the songs on the radio and what was going on with her. He only half-listened and had to keep reminding himself to unclench his teeth. He switched out with another co-worker and went home shortly after a group of high schoolers came through.

—

“I’m sorry for imposing on you like this,” Ryou said as he sat in a desk chair in Yuugi and Atem's bedroom.

“We want our home to be like your home, too,” Atem said, sitting across from Ryou on the bed. Yuugi wasn't home at the moment. “What brings you here?”

“I just thought it would be nice to see you, or Yuugi-kun, as well. Living alone can be lonely, sometimes.” It wasn't the most honest answer, but it wasn't a lie, either. Part of Ryou wanted to say something about his nightmare, how he’d been shaken all day, but it caught in his throat. It was rude to complain.

“Well, you're always welcome here, if you need company. Friends looking out for each other is important,” Atem said. When Ryou only smiled and nodded, he segued, “In our last RPG session—I didn't recognize the monster that could copy attacks from the handbook, did you work out the stats for that yourself?” He’d been interested in trying to DM himself and had been paying close attention to how Ryou ran the game.

“Oh, yeah, I did. I can’t take all the credit, though, powers like that are in a lot of games and anime.” Ryou’s whole demeanor lightened with the change of topic. “I was impressed with how you fought it. I expected someone would figure out that its weaknesses would adapt to what it had copied, but I didn’t expect that you’d catch about how many turns it took before it lost a copied move.”

“I wouldn’t‘ve gotten it if Jounouchi hadn’t led with a move my character was weak to. I got lucky, I couldn’t’ve reached that conclusion on my own.”

Ryou raised his eyebrows. “One of the biggest faces in competitive tabletop gaming got lucky.”

“I stand by my words.” Even though he was refusing to take credit for his skill, Atem smirked.

Ryou smiled earnestly back. “Of course you do.”

They smiled silently like that for a moment. Ryou felt like he should say something to continue the conversation. But just smiling wasn’t too bad, Atem didn’t look like he felt awkward, but Ryou knew he could be wrong. Misreading people was such an autistic thing, after all, he probably did it a lot. Then Atem straightened his back, widened his eyes, and said, “Oh! I just remembered the polite thing to do when you have a guest is to offer you something to drink. We have green tea, instant coffee, coke, and also water, of course. Is one of those something you want?”

Ryou blinked with surprise, startled from his thoughts. “Umm, I like green tea. I mean, I would like green tea, since you’re offering.”

“Let’s go to the kitchen, then.” Atem said this so smoothly that Ryou momentarily felt jealous at how quickly he could compose himself. Atem stood and Ryou followed shortly after.

Atem put water in an electric kettle and prepared a teapot with tea in the filter, sat out two mugs. Meanwhile, Ryou sat at the small kitchen table and looked at the photos of Yuugi, Atem, and their friends on the wall, some of which were taken as far back as before Ryou had transferred to Domino High School, others from hangouts and events since then, including from graduation as well as various game nights and tournaments. There was one candid shot of Atem and Yuugi holding hands and looking at each other across a table that was so warm and intimate that Ryou couldn’t bear to look at it, it sent a cold pang of tightness to the center of his chest.

He redirected his gaze to the table where there was a vase of cut carnations. They had begun to wilt, the heavy heads of the flowers bowing turning brown at the edges of their petals. A few red-and-white striped petals had fallen onto the table.

“These flowers aren’t looking too good,” Ryou commented as Atem sat down to wait for the water to boil.

“Yeah, Anzu brought them when she visited last week, but they sat on a counter in her hotel room for a few hours beforehand. They never completely bounced back. Still, it was kind of her.” Atem’s smile was reserved as he looked at the flowers.

“Oh,” was all Ryou said in response. He wondered when they’d get thrown out. The burble of boiling water broke the heavy silence. Ryou’s mind turned from the mercy granted to dying flowers to his dream and every allowance he’d ever given Bakhura, every inappropriately tender thought that his subconscious apparently still harbored. As if he didn’t know that Bakhura had at least attempted to murder the loving man currently fixing him tea, had attempted to murder the whole world, had put Ryou’s friends in comas, had hurt so many people that Ryou would never be able to name. Like that was unimportant next to the way bullies had learned to leave Ryou alone, the supernatural anesthesia for his wounds, an intangible embrace to settle Ryou down when his heart was racing too fast to sleep, the knowledge that it was possible to speak to the dead, the question of what else was possible.

Ryou covered his eyes so that Atem wouldn’t see the tears welling up in them. He tried to take deep breaths. He forced his expression to stay neutral and moved his hands to his lap as Atem moved the flowers aside, and placed the teapot on the table with a timer.

“Are you alright?,” Atem asked.

 _Breathe in-two-three, out-two-three._ “I’m alright,” Ryou said with as flat of a tone as he could muster. “Maybe a little tired. I worked hard today.”

Atem pressed his lips together said nothing. The two men sat silently until Atem stood to pour it the tea.

Ryou started crying again and let himself fall forward, resting with one cheek against the table. “I don’t know why I’m not alright. Nothing bad just happened.”

Atem’s voice in response was quieter than it had been. “Hm. I... Even so, you are clearly in distress.”

Without raising his head, Ryou wrapped his hands around his mug, gripping it tightly. “I keep thinking about high school. It’s been three years. It’s been longer since I graduated than it was that I attended Domino High School.”

“Ah.” A pause. “A lot happened. It can still be sad or scary.”

It hadn’t crossed Ryou’s mind that Atem would also feel something like this. It made sense. Ryou felt selfish and stupid. This was why he was still an outsider amongst his friends. “It is.” He focused his energy and pushed himself off the table. He wiped his tears and took the smallest sip of his tea.

Atem gazed solemnly at Ryou. “I might not be the best person to talk to, but if you shouldn’t keep it to yourself if you’re struggling. Your friends want to support you. There are people whose job it is to listen to your problems.”

“I’ll think about it.” _All the people who were there will only be hurt by knowing how I betrayed them. And if I talk about this with a therapist, I’ll just sound crazy._ “Thank you for the tea.” He took another sip.

—

Atem wasn’t wrong, though, technically. Ryou didn’t like struggling alone. Maybe that’s why, later, when he got home, he turned on his computer and opened up Google. Searching ‘therapists who believe in ghosts’ only gave him articles on the psychology of why people believe in ghosts. ‘Occult therapists’ was a little more helpful, he found a few posts from people saying that they had found therapists who didn’t treat their study of the occult as pathological delusion. It seemed like those people were few and far between, but... Well, he was curious now. He could try asking around on some forums.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this. I hope it wasn't too rough on you. ❤︎
> 
> Fun Fact: I considered using lyrics from “Gimme Gimme Gimme” by ABBA as a title for this.
> 
> I just got into Yugioh and I don't imagine this'll be the last thing I write for it. If you liked this and you want to see more like this from me, the best thing you can do to encourage me to keep writing and getting better is to comment. I love to respond to comments and don't care if they're "late." It might take me a few days to respond to them myself, if I'm being honest, lol.


End file.
